Tragedy

Julia Holter's first LP-- an album of distant, breathy voices; grainy sound collages; and heavy atmosphere with nearly no release-- is a record committed to itself as a project, one that calls to mind the arty, austere work of Laurie Anderson, Grouper, and Meredith Monk.

It's almost unfortunate that Tragedy-- an album of distant, breathy voices; grainy sound collages; and heavy atmosphere with nearly no release-- came out now, in late 2011, if for no other reason that it sounds so contemporary. Younger bands making cool underground music have become goth-curious for the first time in probably 20 years, and the tendency to filter all "pop" hooks through the funhouses mirrors of "avant-garde" production techniques is so commonplace that clarity-- a voice spared from way too much reverb, for example-- has become the exception instead of the rule. Tragedy-- Julia Holter's first full-length-- is one of "those records," but it's also more: more sonically detailed, more attentive to its compositions, and more clever and varied about its use of grayscale. Holter isn't just holding a Russian icon painting in the air and cranking the echo. In turn, it's a record with more integrity than a lot of its peers, a record committed to itself as a project but also exemplary as a summary of several trends in contemporary underground music now.

If "integrity" sounds like an old-fashioned argument, well, it is. Holter's work here rhymes not only with artists as disparate as Zola Jesus and Grouper (or even a bad-dream version of Julianna Barwick), but with the quasi-classical, quasi-medieval sounds of 4AD bands circa the mid-1980s or a tradition of adventurous female artists like Laurie Anderson and Meredith Monk-- arty music that tends toward a kind of austere, asexual mystery.

Holter uses plenty of synthesizers, but also field recordings and percussion that sounds like rattling chains, a blend of sounds that register as obviously "unnatural" and ones that register as almost tactile. Long passages of the record have no beats or vocals, and some of the more song-oriented tracks-- "Try to Make Yourself a Work of Art" or "So Lillies", for example-- are structured as ambient passages that seem like they're trying to organically slip into their "pop" moments, then slip out of them as the track comes to a close.

The result is that Tragedy is a continuous experience that I've enjoyed best front-to-back instead of in parts-- a strength for when you have time and patience, a weakness when you don't. (And there's no ambiguity, I don't think, that Holter wants it that way: The first track is called "Introduction", the fifth is called "Interlude", and the last is called "Tragedy Finale".) I first heard Holter's music a few years ago, when a friend played me Monika Enterprise's 4 Women No Cry compilation, and her contributions there were more contained and mixtape-able-- it's a mode I think she can work in but chooses not to here.

As a general rule, I try and avoid album concepts, especially when it gives the album weight it doesn't earn elsewhere. Tragedy, for example, is based on a 2,439-year-old Greek play by Euripedes-- just try and make it seem unimportant after that. Holter has made a dreamy, intense album that aligns with a variety of traditions but, like a lot of great contemporary music, synthesizes them in novel or at least artful ways.

What gets me about it most, though, is its atmosphere and consistency: Sounds I can't identify resonate in the background; drones underpin entire songs without ever intruding. Still, I know Holter has made this possible, and that's what makes me trust her-- that's what makes me acknowledge the album's integrity. Results with other listeners may vary, but one of my favorite moments of Tragedy is listening to the murmuring, disjointed voices fade out in the album's last 30 seconds: That's when I realize how unified it is, hanging like a storm cloud that barely opens up.